


A curse for a curse

by Hashilavalamp



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, pre-massacre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 06:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12551760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hashilavalamp/pseuds/Hashilavalamp
Summary: Their family is a little tragedy, and it's funny-- so funny, because only Itachi knows about it, and there is nothing he can do anymore.





	A curse for a curse

**Author's Note:**

> I have been rereading the Naruto series and it's inspired me enough to start writing for this fandom again!  
> I was always really attached to the Uchiha family story

It’s called dramatic irony.

The noise of the new rice cooker, the rustling turning of pages of a newspaper his father hadn’t had the leisure to read in the morning, clinking of dishes being set out for dinner. The odd scarping sound of his brother impatiently running his nails across the tatami in the room over. His mother scolding. Father sighing, and turning another page.  Voices from outside drifting by.  
It’s family, painfully familiar. It’s home.

And Itachi doesn’t fit anymore.

Work has kept him away many times before, had always made it a special occurrence when he was there for dinner and didn’t live off of the leftover his mother left for him in the fridge. But then it was a rare treat, a comfort so suffocating that he never wanted to leave the table again and pretend the world wasn’t larger than the house of his family.  
But now it’s stifling his lungs and looks faded to his cursed eyes.

Maybe it’s the light. Maybe it’s the light, or maybe he knows too much.  

He knows what strings and shadows work behind the walls. He knows what he is. He knows the future, he is clairvoyant, clairvoyant through the sacrifice. His eyes now see the cracks his mind hadn’t. Sees the twitch of his father’s eye, wary of his son.

“Dinner’s ready!” his mother calls, with a voice clearer than the temple bells, and Sasuke cries out in delight. Mere seconds later his head pokes around the corner into the room, the dark hair disheveled from his little sprint and his eyes wide. Family dinners are rare.

 “Thank you” Itachi says dutifully when his mother sets a bowl with food before him, but his voice doesn’t come out right. Hollow and empty, as though he were already trying to speak to a ghost. Fugaku’s eye twitches again, so devoid of a father’s pride nowadays that he can’t even look at Itachi directly anymore. And oblivious to the tension surrounding him, Sasuke stretches far out across the table, nearly knocking things over as he eagerly takes the food his mother hands him.

“I’ve been out all day training today!” he announces boldly as he shifts on his seat. His knuckles are a little bruised indeed, and Itachi caught sight of his bloodied knees. “Look at you go!” Mikoto praises, untying her apron and hanging it on a little hook, “but maybe you tomorrow instead of jutsu you should train your manners a little, hm?” She raises her eyebrows pointedly, in the way she always does when she thinks her sons are up to no good. “You ought to patiently wait your turn to get food, look, you nearly knocked over your father’s tea!”

A defiant spark in Sasuke’s eye tells Itachi that he would love nothing more than to argue and explain exactly why he shouldn’t be chastised- and then Fugaku clears his throat and sends him just a single strict look, effectively quelling any sort of rebellion at the kitchen table. Sasuke apologizes in defeat. Itachi wants to ruffle his hair and tell him he’ll help with his training tomorrow. Itachi has six years on him when it comes to appeasing their mother.  
But he cannot.

Itachi is no longer Sasuke’s brother, he’s no longer the prodigious absentee son.

A long time ago he has been reduced to a nameless observer who is still allowed to be an audience to this domestic family life. Which is exactly why it is dramatic irony. Itachi the audience knows more than the characters on the stage who move around and about and talk of future plans. He knows too much: knows of the bomb planted beneath their feet.  
But because he is only audience, he cannot reach out to them. Because he is the bomb, he cannot say anything.

Just counts the moments until it is time to explode, until the curtain falls for the last time on this life he has lived and the faces he’s known. It’s much less suspense than death, and he wonders if he wishes he could draw out this evening for the rest of his life, so flawed and so very far away from himself, or if he wants it to end now. It’s difficult to say.  
And luckily it’s not in his hands. That’s the soothing comfort of being a tool, nothing is yours anymore.

After dinner, Itachi cleans up unprompted. Mikoto gives her son a look somewhere between appreciation and concern, but all she playfully says is that she’s glad he finally takes his duties at home as seriously as the duties the village piles on his shoulders.  
Sasuke quickly ushers her away with talk of shuriken, and if she still remembers any good tips (which of course she does. She is Mikoto of Uchiha), and Itachi washes the dishes in the sink with his father lingering in the doorway.

“It’s rare you don’t get missions at this time” Fugaku states. Itachi sees the crossed arms and the stern expression without even turning around as though he had traded his Sharigan away for Byakugan.  
“It is.”

Itachi has nothing to say to his father. Or he has the world to say, but it’s not his place to do so anymore. Too much has been set in motion, too much is long scripted. The play is ruined when you tell the characters of their tragic fate before it strikes.

“Itachi.”

The water in the sink has taken on an odd color.

“What is it, father?”

 It’s funny – ironic. Itachi used to resent his father.  

“The wall outside is still damaged. If you have no further obligations to attend to, you should fix it tomorrow.”

Itachi lets the water drain from the sink and places the dishes carefully on a laid out kitchen towel for them to dry. He lifts up a corner of the towel, wipes off excess water from his hands. They don’t tremble, and he is calm as he turns around to face his father in an empty motion. They have the same serious look, his mother always says. The same poker face. But his mother’s fragile features. There is just no escape from genetics, from the sin of his blood.

As the bomb, Itachi glares when he looks his father in the eye. Follows the script instead of his heart. “Of course. I will not embarrass you” is all he will let his father know, and he strides with a confidence and smugness that isn’t part of his nature, right past his father. As a gaping wound, Itachi cuts himself out of the family picture. No longer Fugaku’s son as he leaves the room.

I should have been a better son, is what Itachi thinks.

He goes to bed early.

What a nice dinner it was. So far away and faded, a world that he didn’t belong in. Just a last token of family.

As he drags himself up the stairs, a sudden tug pulls him back to it one last time.

Everything inside him twists in agony as he looks into the innocent face of his little brother. His grip on the fabric is tight, a reminder that Sasuke is growing and thriving, and he would be cut like a flower before it even blooms. “Will you have time for me at _all_ this week?” Sasuke asks, much more tentative than usual – he does feel the tension, the monsters lurking outside of his childish worldview, but he doesn’t know how to place it. To him, Itachi is still a brother. Part of the family, part of this world, fitting so seamlessly as he ever did. Part of the curse.

And Itachi could puke because Sasuke will always be his brother too.

“I promise. I will soon have time for you.”

One by one, Sasuke’s fingers release him, and Itachi can finally remove himself. Something stings in his eye as Sasuke lets him go, the gesture weighing so heavy.

“Goodnight. You should sleep early tonight if you want to go training again tomorrow” he says, and drift upstairs to his room.

Sasuke won’t be home. Itachi hasn’t been in months.

And tomorrow there won’t be a home to return to for either of them. That is the curse Itachi has brought upon them. A curse to break a curse, poetic justice to join dramatic irony.  


End file.
